Friday, 11 April 2014

The Great Phone Epidemic - Part 3

The Great Phone Epidemic – Bye Bye Happy Hormones
(Part 3)

Claire - April 11, 2014

There
are two major ways that out body’s cells communicate, the first is the nervous
system and the second is our hormonal system. Both not only control the
functions of cells organs and systems within the body, they also effect our
emotions, how we feel, how we process events and even how we think.

In the
last blog we touched on how the posture we adopt while playing on a mobile
device can have an effect on our brain and spinal cord, but the problem goes
deeper than that. When you spend long hours looking at screens, our eyes
perceive lots of ‘blue’ in the light spectrum. Blue light in natural daylight
is most abundant in the mornings and almost non existent by late afternoon. In
the morning this blue light is a trigger for our brains to switch off the
production of a hormone called melatonin, which is not only a hormone that helps
us sleep, but it also gets converted into serotonin, one of our feel good
hormones. With our retinas being flooded with blue light from phones,
iPads,computers and televisions at all hours of the day our brains are not
making enough melatonin for healthy sleep and also not having enough to convert
into our natural anti-depressant serotonin.

Adding
another layer to this are that the types of things we tend to engage in while
on our phones are often stress inducing. Reading about injustices, horrific
crimes or even about someone’s crappy day can greatly increase your cortisol
levels. What about how it makes you feel when someone is wrong? Or you think a
snide comment is directed at you? Or even something as simple as a typo can
send your stress levels through the roof. Chronic high cortisol of itself
can make you feel pretty ordinary, but because the constant production of
cortisol robs the body of “hormonal building blocks”, it also inhibits your
ability to make happy hormones. And let’s face it, most of what you read on
social media is negative.

When
we sit down with our friends and chat, we produce feel good hormones like
oxytocin and beta endorphin. These hormones help us to feel relaxed, happy,
trusting and connected to other people. If you add to this equation, sharing
food and physical contact, like hugs, these hormones are dramatically increased
and therefore the feelings are more intense. Social interaction via the
internet totally bypasses this hormonal input. You just can’t reproduce that
squishy-feel-good experience over a screen, your body is not adapted to do it.
Not only is it a poor substitute for physical socialisation, but can even false
levels of distrust and increase hostile feelings. Have you noticed how often
people will say things on twitter they would never say to someone’s face?
Cyber-bullying and trolling can show up the incredibly ugly side of humanity,
but at least part of those tendencies come from the lack of oxytocin produced
in virtual communication. Have you ever felt annoyed at someone online, but
felt completely differently when you saw them in person?

Spending
long periods of time on our phones has a multifaceted effect on our hormonal
system. So much so, it can impact how we feel about ourselves, with lowered
serotonin and increased cortisol as well, eroding our relationships as our
oxytocin levels crash. Spending phone free time with your friends and family
can help heal these hormonal upsets.